Three

Thanks to the miracle of Amazon's pre-ordering and prime membership deals, our copy of Toy Story 3 came in yesterday's mail. The girls were very excited. L quickly took it from me and with sure fingers had the shrinkwrap off and the plastic tape open within a minute. She popped the disc out of its button holder confidently.



Who is this agile, self-sufficient little creature?

She'll be three next month, that creature. The past few months have been wonderful for discovering who she is, not just in comparison to her sister, such as we've discovered her from birth, but who she is all on her own. She has independent passions. She wore her firefighter boots to school yesterday, not as part of a costume, but just because she was feeling extra firefighter-ish. She wore them much of last week, too, and on Columbus Day when we went through a corn maze and I was babywearing, she was sporting her firefighter boots in the fallen kernels. I asked her yesteday evening, just to be conversational, if it's super-duper (her highest praise) fun to wear her firefighter boots to school.

Yes! It's fun all day except on the playground because it's hard to pedal the red bikes with my firefighter boots on. So I take them off but then Ms. F tells me to put my boots on when when she's not looking I take them off again so I can go fast on the bikes. And then I can use my boots to collect rocks! And woodchips!

She's also articulate, and a planner. I think this is a really fun age.

So she popped out the disc as if she had done it a hundred times (and maybe she has). She strode across the room, opened the doors of the media cabinet under the television, and with great composure, slid the DVD confidently into the gaping maw of

the VCR player.

(Yes, we still have one of those. Hush, now.)

Only then did she concede that she couldn't get the movie started on her own. Luckily, I was able to retrieve the disc for her, and guide her over one machine to the left. It's good to know that she still needs me

(a little bit).